Hello,
i am following the toaster's LTO thread with great interest. It came up just in time when we were about to order a library with LTO drives for NDMP based filer backup. We are not fixed to LTO, but we need and want the capacity and the performance it promises. This leads to the next question: Does or when will Netapp support SDLT drives?
Christoph
-- Christoph Poellmann INA * Herzogenaurach * Germany fon: 09132 824691 * fax: 09132 824953 * email: Christoph.Poellmann@de.ina.com mobile fon: 0173 5768452
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: David A. Chapa [mailto:david@datastaff.com] Gesendet am: Donnerstag, 15. März 2001 15:53 An: Stringer, Douglas Cc: 'David A. Chapa'; Collie, Michael; 'toasters@mathworks.com'; 'ryanb@enteract.com' Betreff: RE: LTO support?
Doug:
I appreciate your comments and the position of your company. Believe me I want to see NTAP deliver tested, known, high quality solutions to their customer base...more than you know.
And I do understand data protection and restorability having spent the last 10 years of my career doing just that with various software companies, including OpenVision.
My point wasn't that you hadn't heard of the technology, just how surprised that your company isn't as far along today as others are with LTO support.
My two line response wasn't intended as a shot to you or your company. Just a fact, I was surprised.
Kindest regards, David Chapa
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> David A. Chapa Consulting Manager DataStaff, Inc. 847 413 1144 http://www.consulting.datastaff.com
NBU-LSERV@datastaff.com - Adv. Scripting
Quoting "Stringer, Douglas" Douglas.Stringer@netapp.com:
David: Yes, we've heard of it, and LTO as a
supported tape format is on
our roadmap. Please bear with me on this as I want to weed through
the 'talk' and the
'hype' that jumps out at me in the below messages. Data protection and restorability is very serious
business, not glamorous,
not sexy, but pretty darn important if a company's
business depends on it.
Our goal here is to bring to our installed and new
customer base a standard
of 'proven' reliability in maintaining data integrity
so that operations in
workgroups-to-enterprise level environments go on as
expected.
With that in mind, field reliability and data to
prove it out are top on
the list of priorities for our certified solutions.
Coming from a tape drive
manufacturing area myself, I know that introduction
(i.e. shipping vs.
development and marketing) of a new tape format
follows a fairly slow curve
during the first two years before market/customer
acceptance kicks in.
LTO, as well as SDLT, will get there probably sooner due
to both coming from
the 'linear tape format' world and all manufacturers have
a wealth of tape
experience with other formats.
Regards, Doug Stringer
-----Original Message----- From: David A. Chapa [mailto:david@datastaff.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 1:05 PM To: Moshe Linzer Cc: Collie, Michael; Steve Vawter; ryanb@enteract.com; toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Re: LTO support?
LTO has been talked about for the last 18 months
rather
aggressively, I'm surprised as well.
Quoting Moshe Linzer Moshe.Linzer@nsc.com:
Actually, after a closer look it appears that the
IBM
library is an OEM of
the ADIC Scalar 100. There are quite a few vendors
selling (& shipping?) LTO
gear, and with all the hype, I find it hard to believe
that
NetApp doesn't know
about it! As is apparant from this list, NetApp users are
hungry for more
powerful backup solutions, and the fact that there won't be
an
OnTap LTO driver
available until a year after the official release of
the technology is
incredible!
Moshe
"Collie, Michael" wrote:
From your mail, some library vendors are
apparently advance in having
LTO
solutions. We will raise this, as a question to
some of the first tier
library vendors that we are partnering with that
doesn't yet have LTO
solutions.
Thanks for the information.
Michael.
-----Original Message----- From: Moshe Linzer [mailto:Moshe.Linzer@nsc.com] Sent: Monday, March 12, 2001 11:40 PM To: Steve Vawter Cc: Michael.Collie@netapp.com; ryanb@enteract.com;
toasters@mathworks.com
Subject: Re: LTO support?
IBM is offering 2 library models with up to 6
Ultrium drives. Qualstar
also
has a few models available with LTO.
Moshe
Steve Vawter wrote:
I already have 1 vendor willing to admit that
they have a library
that can either be pure LTO or else 1/2 LTO, 1/2
SDLT (heding their
bets). I believe that they are actually already
taking orders and
supposedly shipping these units.
In no way should you take this as a testimonial,
but here is the info:
Overland Data www.overlanddata.com
Steve Vawter voice: 408-490-5310 fax:
408-
490-8615
Staff UNIX Systems Administrator
Steve.Vawter@C-Cube.COM
--> --> From Michael.Collie@netapp.com Mon Mar 12
15:06:31 2001
--> From: "Collie, Michael"
--> To: Moshe Linzer Moshe.Linzer@nsc.com --> Cc: "'ryanb'" ryanb@enteract.com,
toasters@mathworks.com
--> Subject: RE: LTO support? --> X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service
(5.5.2653.19)
--> --> Moshe, --> --> The LTO technology promises performance of
up
to 30Mb/s with 2:1
--> compression. This performance far exceeds
DLTs, SDLT, ATI-2 and
9840s.
The
--> form factor for LTO (Ultrium) is different
for today's tape drives.
--> --> It may be some time before library vendors
integrate the LTO
technology into
--> their products. NetApp support for LTO is
slated for 4th quarter of
--> --> --> ---Original Message----- --> From: ryanb [mailto:ryanb@enteract.com] --> Sent: Monday, March 12, 2001 12:58 PM --> To: Moshe Linzer --> Cc: toasters@mathworks.com --> Subject: Re: LTO support? --> --> On Mon, Mar 12, 2001 at 09:17:57PM +0200,
Moshe Linzer wrote:
--> > Does anyone know when LTO will be
supported
on the filer? I have
two
--> > 760's, and we are shopping around for a
backup library. I am
hesitant
--> > to go with LTO at this point, but
management likes the numbers.
Can
--> > anyone share experience or opinions on LTO
drives or libraries?
--> --> Most LTO equipment is identical to DLT
equipment, only with a
different
--> tape drive. In this respect, the LTO drives
will perform
identically,
or
--> so I'd like to think. ;) Please let me
know
if I'm wrong here.
--> --> - ryan -->
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> David A. Chapa Consulting Manager DataStaff, Inc. 847 413 1144 http://www.consulting.datastaff.com
NBU-LSERV@datastaff.com - Adv. Scripting